Polyphonic Press - Classic Album Reviews · Jeremy Boyd & Jon VanDyk

Roger the Engineer by The Yardbirds: Jeff Beck Unchained and the Weirdest British Rock of the 60s

March 10, 2026·31 min·4 clips

The random album generator picks The Yardbirds, and Jeremy Boyd and John Van Dyke settle into Roger the Engineer with clear affection. They spend time on its alternate Over Under Sideways Down identity, its place in 1960s rock, and the small naming mess around it. The record has aliases. They note that it first came out in the UK simply as Yardbirds, while the US and some other countries tied it to Over Under Sideways Down. The cover gets its moment too. Chris Drea's odd little drawing of the band's audio engineer is why the album now carries the name most listeners remember. They seem to enjoy how lopsided the whole story is. The album also has a clean hook: it is the band's only UK studio album made entirely of original material. Jeff Beck pulls the conversation back again and again. The hosts linger on his playing, especially the Les Paul sustain they hear in the solo on Nazar Blue. That note sticks. One of them tries to explain the held bend through compression, the guitar, and finally just Beck being Beck. Then the story opens up. An Alice Cooper memory comes in, with Beck apparently making feedback and guitar handling feel like part of the act. It sounds barely believable, in a fun way: a guitarist dropping and catching the instrument by the neck while turning the move into triplets. Hendrix becomes the pressure point. They suggest that Jimi Hendrix arriving in England around this time was one of the few things that could make players like Beck and Eric Clapton nervous. The history stays loose, and even the researched facts arrive after the chatter. That suits the album. They are listening for feel, gear, timing, and the unruly streak that keeps The Yardbirds hard to pin down.

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